


These Things Take Time (Like Learning The Clarinet)

by liketogetlost



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 05:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketogetlost/pseuds/liketogetlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows she's disappointed, knows she walked alone through a dozen different realities to find him and still didn't find exactly what she'd been looking for. Because he wasn't as good. He was just one half human boy with one human heart that beat solely for one human girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Things Take Time (Like Learning The Clarinet)

There are times, very real, very tangible times in between the days that people cross off the calender like some twisted countdown to nothing, that he believes all he has to live for is her. That his breath is only useful for recycling itself through the air and into her lungs. That the only reason he exists at all is so her hand doesn't palm empty space for the next five decades or so. And truthfully, the moments he believes there is more meaning to his existence are fewer and farther between.

 

 

For the first few days he's there, her flat is somehow quieter than the TARDIS during the times he traveled with no one by his side. The silence is so deafening that he can pick up the quietest of sounds even with his weaker human ears. The ticking of clocks begins to peck at the back of his head like an insistent humming bird so that he has to jiggery pokery the tocks and the ticks right out of them. It's odd, this nod and politely smile reverie they have going. His stomach turns with the complete and absolute truth of loving her, and yet his hands are ever still grasping at empty air. 

Time, she just needs time, he knows. Before he could have given her all of time and space that his ship had to offer, but now. They tip toe around like they're eternally afraid to awaken each other.

He steps out of the shower one day, and closes his eyes at the sight of no clean towels. Rather than call to her to bring him one, he stands naked in the tub and waits for the water to drip from his skin while he feels the unspoken words try to claw their way out from the bottom of his throat. The air in the room is thick and heavy with heat, and he feels himself respond at the innocent enough thought of her walking in on him at that moment. His wandering hand trailing a path through the wetness on his stomach stops, doubles back up towards his neck when he thinks she might never be ready to touch him. The sounds of her moving things around and closing cupboards can be heard through the door and he's never felt further away from someone who was so close by. He slips on his clothes with his skin still covered in water droplets. 

He knows she's disappointed, knows she walked alone through a dozen different realities to find him and still didn't find exactly what she'd been looking for. Because he wasn't as good. He was just one half human boy with one human heart that beat solely for one human girl.

So he puts socks on his wet feet and grimaces as he walks across the carpet, beads of moisture still slippery between his toes.

He experiences one of those moments where walking at all seems meaningless, and he feels sick. He almost can't see the point in life if the woman he exists for won't even acknowledge his presence.

 

 

He's almost asleep, body sinking into rather than resting upon a big, overstuffed chair in her living room. His fingers are barely holding onto his barely read book when he hears her footsteps across the room. His nerves dance and he catches the book before it can hit the floor as his eyes slide over the rims of his glasses to find her studying him.

The air in the room is delicate, breakable, and he doesn't want to say anything that will send a line cracking between them. So he waits, posed like he's suspended in time, while he watches her bite her lip and pull at the short hem of her nightshirt. It almost reaches her mid-thigh, and he realizes he's never seen this much of her bare leg. He feels a bit honored that she would let him see her like this, almost like she's opening herself up to him, exposing as much as she can.

She shivers, and he notices what could be dried tear stains streaking the apples of her cheeks. He doesn't know if she's been dreaming or just crying into her pillow, but either way the streaks stain his heart as well. She's like a scared animal, his girl, that he's afraid to frighten away with any sudden movements. He remembers how strong she looked running towards him not so long ago and hates himself for breaking her again. His arms ache for her but he reminds himself of _time_ , curls his toes against the soft carpet and waits for her to speak.

She doesn't. But her hands run themselves over her arms a few times and her feet slowly shuffle her body closer to him. His chest feels tight as she reaches up and gently tugs his glasses off, carefully folding them and placing them on the side table next to him. She breathes through her mouth, a mouth he can't help but admire, having not been this close to it in too long. He remembers the taste of sea air mingled with her lip gloss, and licks his lips at the memory. His eye catches her gaze flickering to his fast tongue and back to his stare, and he can't help but feel some pride mixed in with his fear.

Her breath comes, shaky and warm across his face, and it makes his heart race to feel her proof of life, a ghostly touch on his skin. She pulls the pad of her thumb down along the bridge of his nose and he sighs, the first sound to slice the air since her few steps into the room. Tracing the curves and bumps of the bone beneath his skin, her touch is soft and slow like she's proving to herself that it's really him, that he's really in the room with her. His eyelids flutter to a close and he savors the smell of some floral scented hand cream still fragrant on her skin. Her touch is gone as quick as it came and when he opens his eyes once again, his first gaze is on her breasts level with his head, unsupported globes pushing against the fabric of her shirt and letting it drape a few inches away from her body. She shivers again as he watches her nipples harden beneath the thin cotton, he tilts his head back up towards her face and he wonders if she shivered at the cold or at him.

She lets him fall further into her eyes while she lifts a thigh, a smooth muscular thigh, and rests a knee on the chair's cushion before draping herself like a blanket across his lap. Her ankles cross along the arm of the seat as his breath finally leaves his lungs, oxygen he wasn't aware he was holding inside since she touched his nose. 

His arms wrap around her and he has to resist the overwhelming urge to tighten his hold. Her head tilts down, her cheek pressed to his chest, and she clutches a fistful of his white cotton t-shirt in her left palm. When she speaks her voice shakes and she mumbles the words, each one a hot breath against his collarbone.

“Tell me you're here.”

Then his hold does tighten, and he bends his head down towards her as if in prayer, his nose pushing into her hair and bending at the tip as he inhales deeply. He strokes the fingertips of his right hand across one of her ankles, and smiles as he watches her toes bend inwards. 

“I'm here, Rose. I'm right here.” And for the first time since he burst from flames into life, he felt like it was true.


End file.
